When a prospect says "I will try it", set it up with them on the call
When an early prospect says they will try the product later, offer to set it up with them now: share a screen, use their real data, and stop when they see a first result. Interest cools within days, and a guided first result does what a trial link rarely does. Note what they stumble on; it is your onboarding backlog.
By The Marketinque TeamReviewed November 2026
PractitionerThis play is sourced, but only by practitioners’ posts, vendor material or pages we have not read in full. Treat it as reported experience, not evidence.
In the wiki: Getting your first ten customers · Founder brand, press and talks
The play
With the first customers, never leave "I will try it later" as the end of a conversation. Offer to set the product up together right then, on a shared screen, with their real data, until they see their first result. It is the setup Stripe’s founders did on prospects’ laptops, and it converts interest into usage before it cools.
How to run it
- End every first conversation with an offer: "Want to set it up together now? It takes about twenty minutes."
- Do it on their account and their data, not a demo workspace.
- Stop at the first real result, then agree the next check-in date before hanging up.
- Write down every point where they hesitated and fix the top one before the next call.
Watch out for
- This is for the first customers; it does not scale and is not meant to, so stop once onboarding works without you.
- Never ask for their passwords; they drive, you guide.
- Do it unpaid at this stage; once someone pays by the hour for setup they expect everything, as the essay warns about consulting.
Best for
Plays like this one
- A specific customer win, framed as a lessonPost one specific customer win — a real number, named outcome, and the before/after — framed as a lesson others can copy, with the customer’s permission. Concrete proof outperforms feature claims: it shows the result a buyer wants, makes your product the obvious path to it, and lets the prospect picture themselves there.
- Write to a company the week it posts a job your product helps withWhen a company posts a job for the role your product supports, it has announced the problem and a budget. That week, send the hiring manager a short note that quotes what the posting asks for and names one way your product helps the new hire or covers the gap. A dated, specific trigger beats a list of names.
- Ask ten practitioners one sharp question; publish the answersEmail one sharp, specific question to ten practitioners your audience respects, compile their answers into a single post, and tag each contributor. Everyone tagged has a reason to reshare, so the post travels through ten networks at once — and the outreach itself opens relationships with people worth knowing.
- A before/after of real work, with the fixes annotatedPost a real before-and-after of work you improved — a landing page, product listing, email, or ad — with each change annotated and the result quantified. Visible craft is the most convincing pitch there is: viewers self-diagnose the same problems and arrive asking for exactly what you just demonstrated.
Sources
- Paul Graham: Do things that don’t scale (read in full)
Compiled by The Marketinque Team to our editorial standards.